re-thinking reach

December 21st, 2009 • posts i've written

If we stopped measuring reach solely by impressions and instead, factored in how content posted to a site is spread by its readers – our notions of the top sites on the web would dramatically change.

Fortunately, this is something we can actually do. Simple tools like Google Blog Search, Backtweets, and more sophisticated services like Scout Labs and Radian 6 make tracking how content spreads nearly automatic.

We can start by simply multiplying the usual reach estimate of a site by the % of the estimated readership that has spread content in the past (an estimation drawn from the number of links back, tweets, etc). We could go further by tacking on the estimated reach of the sites where the content was spread to – but we’d find that many of these sites are too small to have an accurate measure of readership.

What would we find? Well, 4chan would probably be the number one site or at least somewhere in the top 5. Mainstream media sites would drop way down in the rankings – these sites have simply not reinforced the sharing behavior with their users. Blame the years they spent fighting any kind of user interaction.

I hope we start to see lists like this in 2010. If anyone works at any of these measuring services, send them my way, I want to make this happen (or hit my head against the wall until it can’t).

Related posts:

1. small thinking
2. blippy and the over-simplification of sharing
3. gini coefficient for online participation

Tags: impressions, measurement, reach, tracking

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